NETWORKS DIFFER ON COVERAGE OF HART

By PETER J. BOYER

Published: May 5, 1987

For the network news executives who decide what millions of viewers will see in nightly newscasts, the Gary Hart ''womanizing'' controversy presented some difficult questions: A newspaper article saying that Mr. Hart spent the night with a woman was a compelling story, but was it appropriate, or even accurate?

After some hesitation at first, all three networks went after the story with vigor yesterday. On the nightly newscasts all three made as their top story the assertions made in an article in The Miami Herald that Mr. Hart spent last Friday night in his Washington townhouse with a woman visitor.

Even as the networks reported the story, emphasizing the threat it presented to Mr. Hart's Presidential campaign, news executives questioned the propriety of the subject matter and the accuracy of the article. Three Stories in One

In fact, the matter of whether the news media has a right to scrutinize a candidate's private life to the degree of staking out his private home, as a team of reporters from The Herald did, itself became a story on all three network newscasts.

''It's three stories, not just one,'' said Rick Kaplan, executive producer of ABC's ''Nightline'' program. ''One story is the potential damage to the lead runner in the campaign; the second story is the propriety of the press in pursuing this kind of story in way they did it; the third is whether the agency that chose to do it proceded to print too quickly, that is, whether they're right.''

On Sunday, the day The Herald printed its article, ABC was the most aggressive in reporting on it and in presenting the potential threat it posed to Mr. Hart's campaign. On the weekly news interview program, ''This Week With David Brinkley,'' Mr. Brinkley and ABC correspondents discussed the matter at length, while similar programs on NBC and CBS did not.

On the ABC program, Sam Donaldson said of Mr. Hart, ''If in fact he was dumb enough to go ahead with conduct that if discovered would be inimical to his campaign, he should be disqualified for stupidity.''

On the network's Sunday evening broadcast Mr. Donaldson, the program's anchor, introduced a report on the article by saying, ''Senator Gary Hart, the Democratic Party hopeful, appears to be in deep trouble tonight as a result of a new charge of womanizing leveled against him - a charge Hart flatly denies through a spokesman.''

Mr. Donaldson said there was ''never a doubt, never'' at ABC on whether to broadcast the story Sunday. He said ''we're very sensitive to accusations'' about the news media going beyond the bounds of propriety in scrutinizing a politician's private life, but added, ''when it comes to the morality of public candidates who preach a public line, I think we ought not to be squeamish about doing a story.''

Last night, ABC's ''World News Tonight'' began its broadcast with two stories on the controversy, one on Mr. Hart and the other on the propriety of pursuing the story. James Wooten said in his main report that the Hart campaign was ''in grave peril, perhaps mortally wounded'' by the womanizing stories.

''Listen, I think this is a great story,'' Mr. Wooten said. ''If I'd gotten that tip, I'd have been there with cameras.''

Other television journalists were less certain. On Sunday CBS correspondent Charles Osgood, who anchors that network's late-night weekend news, hesitated over doing the story at all. ''Obviously, it does raise some questions, and you have to think about it,'' Mr. Osgood said yesterday. ''The consensus last night was that in this instance, because of the history of the story, and the fact that he's running for President, we decided it was a story, and not just scandal mongering.'' Debate at NBC

Even then, on CBS's two evening newscasts, the network relegated its coverage on Sunday to 30-second reports read by the anchors, rather than presenting produced videotape pieces.

NBC amended a taped report it had already prepared on Mr. Hart to include the assertions in The Herald. William Chesleigh, executive producer of the weekend version of NBC's ''Nightly News,'' said he and his colleagues debated how heavily to play the story.

But by yesterday the debate had subsided. ''It's clearly a story, it's been given wide circulation, and it's probably going to be an issue in the campaign,'' said William Wheatley, executive producer of ''Nightly News.''

Executives at all three networks said the single factor that most convinced them to play the story big yesterday was the fact that Mr. Hart, in an interview published in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, seemed to issue a challenge to the press on the question of womanizing. ''Follow me around, I don't care,'' he said in the interview. ''I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored.''